"Filth"

ZUM

Artists:

High Castle's debut EP is an exercise in brevity-- one side, seven songs, and 12 minutes worth of tribal, frantic post-punk. Keeping things short allows the California trio to pound away without risking tedium, more often than not leaving you wanting more. And despite the band's love of repetition, they pack a decent bit of variety into tiny spaces. "Filth" is literally crammed, with different lyrics howled by two overlapping vocalists, so the words actually take longer to read on paper than they do to sing. What exactly the group is singing about isn't clear, but it's something ugly-- dogs ruling the earth, trash piled to the sun, filth which "accumulates disease of squalor." The meaning may lie more in the sound than the sense, as the band's mash of Lightning Bolt speed, Boredoms dementia, and Black Eyes shout make it all seem like a pretty big emergency. Maybe that's why they're in such a hurry to get things over with, but "Filth"'s spilling energy also suggests High Castle have a lot more of these blasts in store.